Last time I checked, a room full of white men is not an accurate representation of California’s demographic.

That’s why as California gears up to redraw its legislative boundaries to reflect new census data from 2010, the state is creating an independent and “depoliticized”  redistricting committee of 14 people that will supposedly mirror the real California. As the golden state continues to sputter in political gridlock, redistricting is beginning to catch on as an important issue. This is especially true in the wake of accusations that California legislatures have used boundaries as political tools or “incumbent protection plans.” California’s move to draw new lines could very well reflect a national trend. But before a collective pat on the back is in order for this political innovation, let’s dig into the can of worms we’re about to open up.

Think folks from all walks of life are lining up to be on this committee? Not so much.

Michael Krasny from NPR’s Forum pointed out the general perception that this redistricting work is arcane, boring, dull, and overall, not too sexy. We’re not seeing people quite as eager to jump on the civic engagement bandwagon like they were in 2008 when Obama called for grassroots campaigners, especially when this redevelopment work has traditionally been done by white men at the state capitol. Go figure.

But the state is trying its darndest to bring in 14 men and women who actually represent the diversity of California by the Feb. 12 deadline. But so far three-fourths of the current applicant pool is made up of white men.

These new lines drastically impact how the state represents its citizens and the real question remains: Can you get enough applicants from diverse areas in California to redraw district boundaries that the state Senate, Assembly and Board of Equalization will use to make political decisions?

California voters thought so in November 2008 when we passed the Voters FIRST Act, the proposition to create this Citizens Redistricting Commission. To sit on this committee you have to be a few things:

-You must be a registered California voter and you must have voted in at least two of the past three statewide general elections as a five-year dedicated political member of your party of choice.

– You can’t have  served on a school board, served on legislature, be a registered lobbyist, or a campaign contributor of $2,000 or more.

-Basically, you shouldn’t be too involved in politics.

These restrictions are meant to bring in people outside of the political junket, but maybe these efforts are more political than we think.

Michael Krasny pointed out that 60 percent of Californians are people of color but only 30 percent of them vote. Krasny, perhaps naively, asked one of  the guests on his show if “we have a problem with apathy.”

Nancy Ramirez, Western regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund said that she didn’t want to call if apathy. “It goes along with a history of really putting barriers in place for the Latino community and other minority communities where there were restrictions in terms of making ballots available in other languages, and other discrimination measure put in place. After a while, people ask of their vote is really going to make a difference.”

Organizations like Ramirez’s are reaching out to widen the traditional breadth of applicants and working to educate people about the role of the redistricting commission.

This depoliticizing and “reach out” process are becoming expensive. Governor schwarzenegger just added $5 million to the $3 million originally designated to draw new lines.

Do you think we’ll see a state commission that looks like California?

After an 11-hour flight from Haiti, four-year-old Jersen Silvester Eefting met his new parents in his new home in the Netherlands. Jersen is one of 123 children flown to the Netherlands on Thursday. Between 1,200 and 1,500 adoption cases like this are thought to be pending in France. US officials think there are at least 300 such cases in the states–some advocacy groups predict the number of pending adoptions is more like 900.

Last week’s devastation in Haiti–a country that had 380,000 orphans before the earthquake–triggered an influx of questions about adopting Haitian children. Amid the adoption flurry, aid groups warned last week that this could easily lead to human trafficking.

A Unicef spokesperson said that a Haitian government report found that 15 children had disappeared from hospitals and they’re thought to be “taken.” There have also been observations at the airport of children being loaded onto planes. “Unicef has been working in Haiti for many years and we knew the problem with the trade of children in Haiti which existed before,” the Unicef representative said. “Unfortunately many of these trade networks have links with the international adoption ‘market’.”

Human trafficking among Haitian children was a big problem for the country before the quake. A Haitian newspaper estimated 173,000 Haitian children internally trafficked for domestic servitude in 2008.

The Haitian government worked to track down families and make sure that all kids under five were in a safe place and properly fed by this weekend.There are 29 agencies pooling child protection resources in the country, according to a report by The Guardian. Aid groups have set up about 20 safe centers that are catering to  2,000 children every day. Groups have also established surveillance system to monitor disappearances and work to prevent them from happening.

People are coming together to help the children that need help in Haiti, but the goal is not to export the kids. Several Haiti adoption websites say new adoption applications are not being processed.

Unicef has also opposed outside adoption saying it’s a last resort. After all, an unaccompanied child on the street is not necessarily an orphan. “It will take some time before we reach an understanding of the number of children who are going to be orphaned,” a Unicef spokesperson said. “Do not forget that Haitian society has a very strong setup and that there will be a lot of family members willing to care about children from their own families.”

Carolyn Miles of Save the Children said, “the vast majority of the children currently on their own still have family members alive who will be desperate to be reunited with them and will be able to care for them with the right support.” And according to a Unicef spokesman, it’s not uncommon for poor families to put their kids in orphanages with a view of getting them back later.

Some of the adoption scenarios involve families who entered the adoption process before the earthquake hit, but are now anxious to speed up the process. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CNN she was “personally directing that we do everything we can to try to find and identify those children who are already adoptable… and to try to expedite all the paperwork… to get them to their new home.” And And Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the U.S.’s move to waive visa requirements for Haitian children already on the path to adoption would allow them “to receive the care they need.”

Some worry whether removing a kid from her country further disrupts a country that’s been seismically torn apart. The relocation could save her life and give her opportunities she might not have if she stayed, but it could also upend her entire sense of community. The bottom line:  Most officials agree that sending emergency aid resources to Haiti is a better option than withdrawing anything or anyone.

These are sticky questions. Should homeless Haitian children be flown out of the country for adoption? In what cases?

Thirty-seven years ago the Supreme Court established a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy. “The guarantees in Roe have provided tremendous opportunity and choice for women to control our lives and bodies,” Eleanor Smeal of The Feminist Majority Foundation said about the famous court case. “It’s so much a part of the fabric of our society that people take it for granted.”

But those who care about protecting reproductive rights are far from crossing this one off our collective “to-do” list. Eighty-seven percent of U.S. counties have no abortion provider, according to NARAL Pro-choice, the reproductive rights advocacy group. What does it all boil down to? This basic human right is under attack on many fronts.

In the courts: Today an anti-choice fanatic from Kansas City, Mo. named Scott Roeder is being tried for the premeditated, first-degree murder of Wichita physician Dr. George Tiller. Roeder told The Associated Press in November that he was driven by religious zeal to shoot Tiller in order to protect unborn children. For 33 years Dr. Tiller defended women’s constitutional right to access safe abortion care. “Abortion is about women’s hopes and dreams,” he said. “Abortion is a matter of survival for women.”

In congress: After four months of debate around health care reform, its still unclear if our leadership can stand up against Catholic Bishops and other extremists like Bart Stupak whose efforts in health care legislation chip away at abortion rights.

Where does the president stand? The last few presidents have used the anniversary of Roe v. Wade to make a statement about their stance on abortion rights by flip-flopping America’s policy on the global gag rule. The “gag rule” denies American funding for HIV/Aids clinics, birth-control providers and other organizations that council about abortion to countries that even mention abortion to women with unplanned pregnancies. This policy has become a political punching bag for incoming presidents. But last year, Obama broke the cycle and reversed the order several days after Roe v. Wade anniversary in an attempt to disrupt the political bantering.

Abortion protesters continue to rouse their dissent. Today March for Life activists marched the National Mall, the Supreme Court and Capitol Hill to promote anti-abortion legislative action. The pro-life advocacy group thinks the “life of each human being shall be preserved and protected from that human being’s biological beginning,” according to the organization’s Web site.

In the shadow of this year’s anniversary is the death of a leader of the reproductive rights movement. Yesterday, Ruth Proskkauer Smith died at 102 years old. Smith advocated for women’s access to birth control in the 1940s and in the late 1960s she co-founded NARAL pro-choice, a reproductive rights organization that helped shape the kind of culture that led to the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade.watch?v=MEt6f99gsEE&feature=player_embedded

*If a Virginia driver wants a cute little canary yellow license plate with smiling stick figure kids, they’re supporting a “Choose Life” campaign. Fifteen dollars of the $25 processing fee goes to Heartbeat International,  a Christian group that funds crisis pregnancy centers. The Washington Post reports that as of yesterday, “1,678 of the license plates had been purchased, and $10,170 has been earmarked for Heartbeat.” The plate has a drawing of a boy and girl under the words “Choose Life.” Jessica over at Feministing had an appropriate jaw drop at this news. Thank you WashPost for covering this story!

*Lifetime is running trailers for its new original movie “The Pregnancy Pact.” The story is about a gaggle of high schoolers who make a pact to get pregnant. Together. Yes, all together. Whatever happened to the good ol’ days when we just opted to pact together and be friends forever? Right when I was thinking that, Tina (otherwise known as Thora Birch) from the ama-zing 1995 film “Now and Then” walks down the hallway of the High School. She’ll throw her hand in the pile and chant “one for all…and all for one” with me. But nope, she’s in on it too. Well, not quite. Birch plays a  hard-nosed reporter who comes into the school to sniff out the pregnancy phenomena. Seriously, what’s up with our uncritical obsession with teen pregnancy recently? Juno, 16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom, The Secret Life of the American Teenager…please add to this list. The sad thing is a voyeuristic urge in me yearns to actually watch this. It’s interesting to see how our society reconsiles a life altering (I hesitate to say “ruining” for sake of being sensitive to people’s life choices) occurance such as teen pregnancy with our obsession with baby-mama-drama. The Pregnancy Pact, check it out for yourself.

*Kathleen Hanna? Bikini Killer? Le Tigress?  Riot Grrrl? Any of these names rink a bell? New York University’s Fales Library recognize them, and is archiving precious documents of the Riott Grrrl Manifesto and its offshoot movement in the early 1990s. Why does NYU care? They say because “the Riott Grrrl Collection will support scholarship in feminism, punk activism, queer theory, music history and more.”  Right when I thought the last Riot Grrls were dying off like an exotic species of birds they were, we get this news.

About a quarter of the way around the “Life” board game, the solo driver must pause at a mandatory red light to marry. As a kid, I distinctly remember putting my little blue lemming groom in the driver’s seat while plugging my pink one in shotgun. Why? My miniature alter ego wanted to look out the window, of course! Besides, the guy always drives.

I didn’t think anything of the social brainwashing at the heart of my innocuous driver switch-a-roo. But, as it turns out, the heroic male driver is somewhat of a phenomena. The New York Times today reports that the Department of Labor’s American Time Use Survey showed that, “women do indeed spend a disproportionate share of their in-car time as passengers — 29 percent. This is more than twice the share of men, who only spend 14 percent as passengers. This certainly suggests that when men and women ride together, men are behind the wheel.”

Is this a remnant from the cult of domesticity, or maybe a residual chivalrous custom? Probably so, those buggers are hard to shake. But according to sociologist Pepper Schwartz, even in self-declared feminist households, men are far more likely to drive when the couple hops in the car together. As it turns out, upper class folks spend relatively less time as passengers while immigrants, especially Hispanics, carpool more. Is driving a rich, white guy thing? No, it can’t be this easy.

Our transportation scholar and NYT reporter Eric A. Morris brilliantly points out that the gap between men and women is explained by the fact that men tend to work more hours, which in turn causes them to spend more of their in-car time driving. Morris’ post hits a PING! when he asks the question we’ve all been wondering: “is this state of affairs due to men’s preferences, women’s, or both?”

That a little feminist in training (that would be 9 year-old me) put the blue pin in the driving seat, even though the pink one was doing the job just fine, indicates that these gender norms are instilled early and instilled compulsively. I’m not gonna go to that dark place and say men’s insecure egos need coaxing only a joy stick can provide because we all know that’s not fair. And is it really that productive? Let’s just put this little driving factoid on our collective radars and think a bit more about what compels us to do the things we think we’re supposed to do

Many thanks to Google images

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I found this video last week and was just going to link to it but after Vanessa’s comment, I decided to delve deeper on the subject. V nailed it on the head calling the video “fried barf on a stick,” and then she pointed out several of the ways in which it’s backwards..ridiculously backwards:

Those actresses make light of the years that women labored to be perceived as equals among men. The new product was not equivalent of the Wii. It was substitute for second-class citizens with games that reinforced subservient behavior patterns

All I can say is I’m glad this commercial isn’t in English. It’s offensive enough visually. Putting the lame ass gender norms aside, I think the video employs humor in a really interesting way. The ad is clearly trying to be funny. We get this sense right off the bat with the portly dudes and their annoyed female companions. The viewer is supposed to identify with this scenario: the guys are trying to have fun and the gals kill their buzz. Whichever side you identify–or don’t identify–with, we can probably all agree that this is a culturally familiar narrative.

The Wii turns the guys into buffoons, but then we realize that the women too are subject to buffoonery as the Shii intoxicates them with an innate urge for all things domestic. The women go cra-zy! The men love it. We weren’t expecting this…it’s sooo FUNNY! Then, in the last moments the women start sucking mechanical dick. All hell breaks loose and it’s hard to not gasp–and let out a little chuckle– at the absurdity. I know European ads tend to be much more unbridled then those in America, but still, this is pretty risqué.

Humor is a powerful tool. That’s really my point. When we laugh, we let the feeling take us over and forget to think. Just for a little bit. Sometimes, this isn’t such a big deal. But, a lot of the time, humor is an artificial treatment we coat over a more serious topic that we’d rather not deal with. Political jokes, racist jokes, anti queer jokes, blond jokes, Jew jokes, dead baby jokes.

It’s troubling to see commercials like this because they invite viewers to laugh off thousands of years of systemic subjugation as if “we’re so over it.” With all of the keeled over laughing, the danger is you’ll forget to think.

Visit Denmark for its castles, Viking heritage, the Tivoli garden, Legoland, its offensive cartoons about Muslims and…its loose women.  I probably had you until the last one, but it’s true:  A Danish tourism agency is officially promoting the country with claims of sexy, blond single women who will have unprotected sex with you. If you don’t believe me, check it out for yourself.

0xKaren26 – Karen in Denmark seeking August\’s father – (2009) (Denmark)‘ >div>

But watch out! When you take off the next morning without leaving your phone number and apparently your name, you’ll have no way of knowing if you knocked her up. Even so, you won’t have to worry because over a year later she’ll contact you with your adorable infant son sucking down a bottle in her arms. Email her, if you want, but she’s not asking anything of you. Karen, the beautiful blond, makes it clear that she’s no bimbo and she’s certainly no ho.

For any one who might actually believe Karen’s story, please, don’t be fooled. As it turns out, Karen is an actress who’s appeared here and here in other commercials.

Karen’s home video confessional went bananas on the net. “It is the most successful viral advertising ever. We have cut through the media clutter. It has cost us the same as a 30 second commercial, aired a few times on TV2” according to Peter Helstrup from the advertising agency that created the campaign.

When asked why the they decided on this promotion route, the CEO of VisitDenmark said the video was “good exposure for Danish self-sufficient and dignified women.”

The Karen video caught a second wind this week after the story went viral in Denmark several months ago. U.S. readers had a field day with comments. Person favorites include: “I wonder if she wants more kids?,” “THIS is why the TSA is trying to keep us from flying!” and “Why isn’t she breastfeeding? It is very irresponsible of them to promote formula.”

If not “come to our country, knock up our women and then leave,” then what is the Danish tourist board’s implication? Maybe their justification is that the economy has gone to shit so it’s time to pimp out their women for the sake of the homeland. Or perhaps something is culturally lost in translation.  As adland.tv’s “Dabitch” puts so well, “Come to in Denmark.”